I am in the wrong line of work.
There is real money to be had, I tell you, in the textbook publishing industry.
I went today to sell back one textbook. Just one. All the others correlate to my major (Education) or my minor (Linguistics) and therefore I either cannot or choose to not sell them back. But I went to sell my communications text book and what do they tell me? It’s now an old edition.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
How to make a new edition:
- rearrange a few chapters.
- change the cover image/layout.
- fix one or two of the errors in the previous edition.
- update a few statistics.
TA-DA! A new edition!
Now you can charge the students full price for a brand new book (plus the amount charged by the bookstore, they gotta make a living too…) because there are now NO used copies anywhere. Plus, those poor saps who wanted to sell back the book CAN’T because it is now outdated! HA HA HA HA HA! Suckahs!
I am in the wrong line of work. I somehow need to be involved in textbook publishing…
I agree. When I taught, I compiled my own anthology (public domain English and American literature), burned CD’s for the students , and beat the system in my own small way. The new anthology was 85.00; mine was about .85 per unit. It had most of the same pieces and authors plus I customized it to include some more rare texts.
[...] Where the real money is to be had in college. [Panic is overrated and unnecessary] [...]